


Maybe You Knew

by hobbitdragon



Series: Mercy [2]
Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: Daud/Outsider implied, Fatherhood, Forgiveness, Gen, Introspection, Other, Possession, Post-Low Chaos Ending, Worship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-07
Updated: 2017-02-07
Packaged: 2018-09-22 16:27:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9615959
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hobbitdragon/pseuds/hobbitdragon
Summary: What an exquisite agony, to know that someone understands. To know that, however briefly, one is not alone.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Content warnings: a young person briefly implies Daud wants to fuck a child/teen and then describes it with mild detail. This is then immediately followed by Daud murdering that young person. Other than this, there are references to canon-typical levels of violence throughout.

_No need to waste breath with apologies or excuses. You taught me that. All I can say is that as soon as I left Dunwall my head felt clear, maybe for the first time._

_You told me once that people like us burn hot, then burn up. We don't get a chance to start over. No long days in the sun. But I know you, Daud. Despite all the blood on your hands, you've been stashing coin. No one does that if they're not holding on to something. You've got some kind of plan, some hope for a new life._

_Maybe you knew, maybe you didn't, but that's what you gave me when you let me walk away. The one thing you said that wasn't possible. And I will never forget that. When the time comes--and it will--I hope you're watching close so you get that chance too._

_I left a book for you. The world is big. Bigger than I knew. There are lots of places where an old man like you could disappear._  

 

__\- Billie_ _

 

 

 

Daud pulls out the tiny watertight box he keeps in his breast pocket. He thumbs the latch, pops open the top, and extracts the carefully-folded note. He rereads it again. His eye lingers on the signature.

The note’s handwriting is not good. Billie learned to write too late in life to have the graceful script of a noble. Her letters are careful and slightly shaky in the way of people who have not been writing for long, and Daud knows that she is much more comfortable holding a knife than a pen.

For a moment upon first reading it, Daud had wondered if the note had been written by someone else and the signature was a lie. His thoughts had gone to Thomas, and Daud had briefly contemplated that this might be part of  _another_ attempt to unseat him as the head of the Whalers. But there is a particular way (which Daud had tried to train her out of, without success) Billie has of reversing some of the strokes when she writes. Where part of a letter ought to curve up, hers curves down, where it ought to curve out, it curves in. It would be difficult to imitate, and to anyone other than Daud and Billie herself, her writing might not even be legible. But Billie’s is a hand Daud knows well. It could not have been written by anyone else.

He remembers her at fifteen, so starved that every one of her ribs showed on the front of her chest, and undersized enough that her scalp barely reached his chin.

He remembers the secret, hoarded pleasure of feeding her. The sin of finding rich foods to sneak her beyond the rations she shared with all the Whalers. Better than tasting delicacies himself was watching Billie gobble them down. She ate like so many poor children, fast enough that she barely tasted anything that passed her lips, but that hadn’t mattered to him. The pleasure was in watching her grow strong on fruit and butter and meats that hadn’t been culled from back-alleys or polluted rivers. She had sprung up, shoulders growing broad and hard with muscle, thin greasy hair thickening and softening into the rich black silk she kept so carefully hidden beneath her mask.

It was dangerous to play favorites, and Daud had known that. It created dissension in the ranks to reward anything that couldn’t be imitated. Praising the strongest and most skilled made the others try harder, that was good sense. But to _treasure_ anyone, to have any weakness that might be observed--that was to open them both to pain. It was offering a wound to be probed by harsh fingers, dug into with dirty fingernails and exploited for gain.

Daud had killed the first and only Whaler to comment upon Daud’s odd behavior to Billie. Had looked him in the eye for a long moment, a promising young recruit who wanted to know what Billie had done to get better treatment. Was she sleeping with him, the boy had asked. Was she spreading her runty little legs for Daud’s fat prick? Did Daud like how undersized she looked? Or was it that Daud liked the boyish lines of her face, the flat chest that grew no breasts at all? Because if _that_ was the case, then there were boys who’d do anything to earn a similar place in Daud’s eyes. It didn’t have to be a girl, did it? It was fine if it wasn’t, nobody in the Whalers would judge.

Daud had held the lad’s gaze for several long seconds, contemplating, examining the hope in that young face. The boy had been the same age as Billie herself, Daud remembered that especially. It had been a reasonable question and one Daud himself would have asked of anyone else he saw doing what he did. A reasonable offer, too: amusement in exchange for special treatment. No different from Daud’s own interactions with the Whale God, really.

When Daud wanted to make a point with a killing, he went for the throat. Blood got everywhere with throats. It was messy, and it sent a message to everyone who observed it later. But when Daud wanted fast, he went for the eyes. So the lad had died with a knife in his eye. Daud hadn’t wanted him to suffer, since he had been a good child, or as good as any who did well in the Whalers. He hadn’t done anything wrong to _Daud,_ at least, had simply asked a question Daud hadn’t wanted to answer.

When the bleeding had stopped and the fluids congealed, Daud had taken the body and positioned it where all the other Whalers would see it. When they asked Daud what the boy had done wrong, desperate not to make the same mistake, Daud said the boy had insulted Billie’s honor, and informed them that if any of them wanted to continue breathing, they’d show respect to the one girl among them. There would be no spying on her to see her undressed, no touching her unless she asked, and no calling her of any names they didn’t call each other.

Daud remembered the way she had taken to the mask after that. She had preened at being singled out, at being _protected_. But it was a double-edged blade, that, and the sharp side didn’t just point outward. It meant that _everyone’s_ attention, not just Daud’s, had lain heavy on her. So she had taken to blending in. The boy hadn’t lied when he’d said she was flat-chested, and as she grew, her shoulders became just as broad as those of any of the others. With the mask on, she was no different: a silent figure whose left hand burned with an impermanent echo of Daud’s Mark.

But Daud had always known her. Had been able to pick her from a crowd of Whalers just from her gait, the shape of her gloved hands. Had been able to _feel_ her, the particular draw of her magic from his, the slight variance in the way she responded to his will.

All of the Whalers were connected to him. A _part_ of him, drawing power from his connection to the Void. More like limbs than people, after long enough. The longer they spent drawing from him, the more like him they became. The more _control_ he had, able to pull them to him whenever he wished, just like the Outsider himself pulled Daud into the Void.

The Whalers had worshiped Daud, almost. He had been a father, a commander, nearly a _god_ to them. Yet there had been rage there, too. Daud would have had to be a fool indeed not to feel it, not to _taste_ it creeping up the back of his throat. Some people loved to be used, oh yes, and many of his Whalers were predisposed. But even the most subjugated hearts felt anger somewhere deep when they were misused, and the Whalers’ rage had been as powerful as whale oil. Daud had known to be careful, lest he make it combust. (Apparently he had not been careful enough.)

What Daud had given them was truly no more than an echo of his connection to the Outsider, a reflection of a reflection. The Outsider had made Daud more like Himself, and it seeped from Daud to _his_ followers, too. But like repeated reflections, the images grew less clear with every iteration. Daud had known he did not have _all_ of the Outsider’s powers, that much was obvious, and the Whalers did not have all of Daud’s powers either.

Daud had heard of 'witches' with the ability to wear the skins of animals, and had known it to be a skill the Outsider had not seen fit to give him. Daud could not exactly enter the Whalers that way, but he could feel them like parts of himself if he focused. He had supposed the Outsider to be aware of _him_ that way, like a limb the Outsider sometimes ignored.

That others were capable of even more direct entry had unsettled Daud. Then Corvo had tried to _enter Daud's mind,_  had tried to wear his very _skin_. Daud had felt his touch and known at once what it was, even if his mind had just as immediately pushed Corvo back out again like a wound’s pus might push out a bullet. 

After Corvo, Daud did not doubt that there were times when it was not solely himself who looked out through his own eyes, felt the world through his skin. Sometimes, surely, _He_ looked out too.

If He sometimes inhabited Daud the way Corvo had tried to do, then it might be so skillful that Daud didn’t even know. A God’s skincraft would undoubtedly be much finer and more precise than anything a mortal could accomplish. Which meant that, possibly, Daud’s whole _life_ was nothing more than puppetry.

Sometimes the thought made Daud so angry he wanted to tear the whole world down, kill every living creature until no thing was left that had not been freed from bodies that could be used against them. But sometimes Daud longed for His inhabitation, and wondered if it were possible to make his skin and bones more inviting, so that another might come inside.

The Whale God was where the truth lay and had always lain. The Beloved One who, by the time Billie had found Daud, had long since grown bored of assassins and stopped appearing to Daud even at His own alters. Daud had grown _predictable_ , settling into his own title as the Knife of Dunwall. The Outsider had made him powerful, and Daud had made himself into a mere _thing_ to be wielded by anyone who had enough coin to afford him. What use did a God have for a knife, even one that had killed an Empress? None.

So when He had appeared to Daud again, it had shocked Daud to his core. After all the years that had passed between them--a mere blink to the Outsider, surely, but _so long_ to Daud--Daud had not thought to see Him again. Had forgotten the way his body responded: the prickle of hairs rising all over his flesh, the arch of his spine, and the way his liquids rushed out of him to greet their maker. Sweat had bloomed upon Daud’s skin, his tongue had flooded with saliva, and the muscles at the floor of his pelvis had to clamp tight to keep anything else from rushing out.

Daud had become used to the half-heard breath of the charms and runes and had forgotten the _real_ call of the Whale God. Daud had forgotten the way he _felt_ the song in his ribcage rather than hearing it with his ears. Forgotten the way it chorused through his fingertips and jaw, skull and sternum, all the bones of him that might be shaped into a dedication to their true owner. Often whale bones were used, yes, but Granny had done it with human bones, because they sang too. Oh yes, they _sang_ , and when Daud saw the Outsider again, his bones cried out in anticipation, in recognition of their destiny: _Someday, someone will write Your truth into me._

Afterward, Daud wondered if he had felt something similar when he had found Billie following him, years ago: a recognition he had felt _bone_ -deep and obeyed without understanding, a song whose notes he could hum without thinking.

As Daud seals Billie's letter away again in its small case, he wonders, now, how faithful a reproduction of the original his experience with Billie is. Daud had looked at Billie and seen what she might become, the paths she might take. Did that happen because that was what the Outsider had felt for _him?_ A recognition of similarity, a knowledge of possibilities, the potential for a connection He chose to foster over all the others who were just as deserving?

A man had come to Daud in the schoolyard when he had been small, pulled him away from his young peers and given his intensity direction and focus. Made him sharp, made him lethal, taught him to him push himself into hearts and brains and guts. The Outsider had made him greater still, a force that never missed and could work its way past any barrier.

And then a young girl had followed Daud home. Had cut till she found his softest parts, and then she had struck. She had sliced through whatever hard cord in him would once have allowed him to kill her, like a tendon parting and leaving the limb lax. Billie had been so skillful and swift that Daud hadn’t even noticed the severance until much later, when it began to hurt.

The man Daud had been before he watched Billie wolf down juicy apples wouldn’t have cared about a dead empress. One dead woman wouldn’t have mattered until one live girl did.

Daud feels the pain of Billie’s cut now, keen and clean and blissful, as he stares out over the sea. Corvo’s stab wound has healed well too, thanks to the vitality granted by echo of the Outsider’s endless life. Memories pull at Daud all the time, but especially now, on the boat taking him away from Dunwall.

At twenty-two, Billie had settled into being Daud’s acknowledged second-in-command and donned a red coat like his own. Then, there had been no more pretense that she was just like the others. Instead she was just like _him_ , and she began to talk of the day the Whale God would appear to _her_.

How she had thought to take over the Whalers without His Mark, Daud wasn’t sure. Perhaps she didn’t think she needed that, and had confidence in her ability to utilize trained killers even without magical aides. Perhaps it had been hubris, imagining that He would notice her if she stepped into Daud’s place, as though the role conferred that attention. She didn’t know that He had abandoned Daud for more than a decade, that for years even Daud himself had no longer been enough to tempt Him.

Daud has not dreamed of Him since leaving Dunwall, has not seen Him, but it means something _different_ now, just as Daud sending Billie away meant something other than enmity. To stay with her, to try to love her when he is also so angry--that would have been a cruelty. Daud wonders if the Outsider angry for the years Daud misspent. Daud is angry at himself, so probably He is angry too.

The Outsider had, once, told Daud how He had been made. Birthed in blood, He said, His throat cut to make Him into what He is now. At the time, Daud had thought this hilarious. “And You gave Your gift to a man who cuts throats for a living! Where’s the sense in that?” And Daud had thought himself so clever, having taken advantage of a _God_. He’d even called his followers the _Whalers_ \--what better to call the followers of a God-cheater than those who killed the sacred beasts?

Except that for all his protestations, there had been moments when Daud thought that his own violence was maybe _why_ the Outsider had chosen him--a sick fascination with His own past, a child playing with dolls to recreate the same horrific scene over and over again. And then Daud had felt small, and frightened, because dolls eventually grew tiring, and even at their most adversarial Daud had not wanted Him to leave.

But of course He did. All Daud had done was create the same scene over and over again, death after death after death. And the Outsider had grown bored.

The Whale God does not even protect His Marked ones, much less promise to remain by their sides. Those He speaks to do not necessarily live the longest or happiest lives. Daud had searched out some of the others, knew the the names and ways of a few, and had watched them in the hope of finding some way to bring His attention back (or avoid it completely, Daud had never been able to decide). Daud has seen the other Marked ones be cruel and virtuous, demure and shameless, with no pattern or predictability that Daud could find. None of them had granted him the least bit of hope.

Daud had not been kind to his followers either….until he was kind to Billie. The Outsider ignored Daud for a decade, and then directed him toward Delilah. What does any of it mean? Why has Daud killed so many for so long only to feel regret _now,_ and against all sense to be allowed now to _escape?_

 _Is this change of heart what made You want me?_ Daud silently asks. _Did You see this possibility years before I did? Is this what You were waiting for? Is mercy what You wanted of me all along?_

As Daud stands at the prow of a ship, a whaler on its way toward Serkonos, the ocean air whips through his hair and clothes, searching him for weaknesses. He is not sure if he hopes that Billie will be there, or if he hopes she is somewhere else in the Isles, far away from where he is going. He wonders if Billie’s echo-Mark will fade, or has already faded, with her distance from him. He wonders if the Outsider will appear to her now or if He never will. 

The ship's railing digs into the Mark. Daud tenses his wrist, wanting the pressure as it shifts back and forth and makes him feel it. His breaths tear out of him, pulled away by the brutal winds, and he gasps, diaphragm straining for relief that never comes. Daud misses her, and even misses Him, and feels it in his bones. But there is nothing his body can do with the need that fills him. The two connections _tear_ at him.

 _Is this what it’s like to be You?_ Daud asks. _Humans die so quickly compared to your lifespan. We are always leaving you. Does that mean you are always missing us?_

There is no answer, but Daud suspects he already knows what it would be. The song that sings through his bones originates somewhere in the Void.

Daud turns over words in his mind. Desire, longing, _lust_ ….Lust is such a prosaic word. Lust can be found and sated anywhere in the Isles by the exchange of mere coin, or in isolation by an idle hand or tool. _Lust_ implies an earthly object, consumable like food or flesh, a thing that can be had in mouth or tail or wherever else. What Daud feels for the Outsider--and for Billie--cannot be called that. _Longing_ is better, but is not vicious enough, brutal enough, to encompass the rage, the betrayal, the _pride_  Daud feels in his connections.

If only it had been as simple as lust, as that young Whaler had supposed it to be. If only Daud could have fucked Billie and been done. If only the Outsider could have fucked _him_ and then _let him go._

But no rocking of hips in imitation of the waves could satisfy what Daud feels. He has never felt the pull toward sex that most seem to experience. So is it _lust_ when there is no motion his body can make to sate itself? Is it lust when he is at his most sated _and_ most desirous with a note tucked into his breast pocket and the scent of the ocean filling all the airy spaces in his skull? Was it lust he felt when he had looked up at _Corvo?_ Certainly Daud had felt _something_ passionate with the man standing above him, holding a naked blade he had already sheathed once in Daud’s shoulder. Corvo too had evoked a longing for release, in one way or another.

Daud could reach for death. Death is easy, death is everywhere. But he cannot reach for mercy, for peace, for _communion,_ anymore than he could touch the Outsider with his bare hands. And Daud’s hands cannot touch Billie either, not anymore.

It is enough to drive anyone mad, such helplessness. Perhaps this is why all the Outsider’s most beloved have been so strange, so touched. The Outsider does not protect those He loves. He gives them the power of choice, and lets them live or die by it. Many die. But some--some live. And, Daud thinks, some use their power to allow life, and thereby maybe begin to understand.

What an exquisite agony, to know that someone _understands_. To know that, however briefly, one is not alone. He is alone now, but....

Billie has studied Daud for years. The _Outsider_ has watched Daud’s life too, perhaps even walked in his skin and _felt_ it from inside. Daud has been fortunate to be watched from two such different angles, read by two such pairs of dark eyes--and then Corvo had looked right into Daud, too. Tried to _be_ him, _inhabit_ him. And, apparently, understood Daud well enough to leave Daud alive, trusting in his honesty.

Daud stands alone on the ship’s prow, and his Mark burns. The hairs all over his body rise, prickling and sensitized under his clothes, erotic and uncomfortable both. His eyes, already watering from the wind, are joined by a matching flow in his mouth. Nearby, a whale breaches the surface of the water, exhaling a great plume that catches the light of the sun.

His ribcage _sings,_ an echo of a great chant. He can barely breathe.

**SHALL I COME IN?**

Daud _feels_ the words rather than hears them, trembling up his sternum and spine. 

"I didn't expect you so soon," Daud whispers, already nodding. 

**Author's Note:**

> Billie's letter at the start of this story is taken directly from the game and is unaltered in any way. 
> 
> Part of my thought in writing this fic was that I wanted it to be a contrast to Corvo's POV in the last fic. Corvo is so horrifically traumatized and ruined by what he's been through that he sees only the worst parts in both himself and the Outsider. Daud, meanwhile, went much further down that spiral, but has had long enough to go through that and come out the other side.


End file.
